What’s normal (or top 5%) for a CrossFit athlete?

Ever see a 32 year old 5’10” 185lb guy walking down the street with a 32 year old 5’5″ 135lb lady and say, “Now those are some CrossFit people!”? Well you should, because those are the most typical ages and proportions for athletes registered for the 2015 Crossfit Open.

I pulled together the data from the profiles of 245,000 CrossFit athletes participating in the 2015 Open. Having all of these stats in one place is valuable as a reference for comparison, and interesting to see how Open athletes fill out their profiles.

One important thing to remember is that these stats are all optional and self-reported. We’ll see some places where that results in curious patterns, but the big issue is that people likely don’t report numbers they’re not proud of. For example, only 7% of women reported their max pull-ups, but among those who did, the average was 19. That’s nowhere near representative, so check the number of profiles included in each stat and consider what that means about the distribution.

Age

Men are a hair older, but its remarkably even actually. 54% of athletes registered for the Open are between 25 and 35. These data do not include the Masters > 55 or Teen < 16 athletes. That’s not because I hate kids or old people, they’re just on their own leaderboard, so I need to pull them next. This is the only required field in user profiles, so this is our only complete observation of the population.

Age

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

102538

32

21

26

31

37

47

Male

142485

32

21

27

31

37

46

Height

Here’s where it gets fun. So guys, how many of you are actually 5’11” but thought it wouldn’t hurt anybody if you rounded up to 6’0″? My estimate … somewhere around 7,000 or 5% of all men. See that big blue spike at 6′ which sticks out of the normal distribution? Any time you see a single value sticking out way above the shaded distribution, that’s evidence of something interesting going on. In this case, I think it’s that being 6 feet tall is an All-American-Man’s right and sometimes he’ll take it even if the tape measure says 5’11”. Reminds me of this article from OKCupid about dating profiles.

Women actually have a curious spot too: at 5′. That seems harder to explain as it looks like it pulls from 4’11” and 5’1″. Everybody likes a round number I guess?

Height

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

38694

65

60

63

65

67

69

Male

77343

70

66

69

70

72

75

Weight

The ladies like to hit 135#, and the men are happy to say 185#, both exceeding their expected frequency in the distribution. This could be because of rounding in the self-reports or because people actually try to maintain those target weights. Interesting that in weights, people like the numbers that end in 5s: 135, 165, 175, 185, 195, and 205 are all more popular than their round number neighbors.

Weight

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

69075

142

114

128

138

151

180

Male

118332

188

150

170

185

201

235

Clean & Jerk

Clean & Jerk

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

24990

134

85

115

135

155

185

Male

51568

224

154

195

225

255

300

Deadlift

The 400lb deadlift is the biggest statistical aberration on this page. It’s extremely motivating as most people’s biggest PR, but it’s in reach for a substantial number of Open athletes. Women are more split amongst 200, 225, and 300.

Deadlift

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

26960

241

155

205

240

275

325

Male

55979

394

275

345

400

441

515

Snatch

Snatch

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

22212

102

65

85

100

118

150

Male

47772

172

115

145

170

200

242

Back Squat

Back Squat

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

25945

194

125

165

195

225

270

Male

54347

321

215

275

315

365

435

Fran

How do you crazy people do Fran so fast? It’s interesting there that we see clusters just under the salient minutes (e.g. the sub-4:00 club) but that it’s not all in one of the 10 second bins. People strive for being sub-X minute, but then often end up with a 3:35 instead of the 3:59 we might expect after seeing the other WoDs.

Remember with Fran and the other time-based WoDs below, lower scores are better, so the 5th percentile is better than the 95th.

Fran

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

9543

6:13

3:03

4:30

5:52

7:32

10:22

Male

31566

4:56

2:28

3:18

4:26

6:00

9:12

Helen

Helen

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

5320

11:33

8:26

9:52

11:12

12:50

15:49

Male

16883

9:59

7:27

8:30

9:33

11:00

14:00

Grace

Grace appears to be the most gender-equivalent of the stats included in the Crossfit Open profiles, but it is also scarcely reported (8% of women, 16% of men).

Grace

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

7786

4:02

2:00

2:51

3:40

4:48

7:23

Male

23051

3:26

1:42

2:19

3:00

4:01

6:32

Filthy 50

Filthy 50

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

3661

28:08

19:15

23:40

27:33

31:45

39:25

Male

10546

25:57

17:20

21:10

25:00

29:27

37:53

Fight Gone Bad

Cool to see in FGB that 300 is a huge goal that works for men and women. We also saw men and women congregating at the same score in Grace (sub 3:00), but here it’s a much bigger stretch for the ladies.

FGB

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

6132

240

0

214

263

306

371

Male

15597

2038

0

256

306

350

421

Pull-ups

This graph makes me think that pull ups aren’t entirely about strength, they’re about will and caring enough to try to set new PRs. There are no plates to load here so there’s reason people only attempt multiples of 5. If 5% of men can do 50 pullups, I bet 4.9% can do 51, but only 1% bothered to notch the extra rep. Why not? Are you the kind of person who would push to 51 once you finally hit 50?

Women (and actually guys too), remember, pull-ups are not an exotic movement. Everyone knows what their PR is. More than 4 out of 5 athletes chose to leave it blank, so you’re doing better than all those … chickens.

Pull Ups

# profiles

Average

5th percentile

25th

50th

75th

95th

Female

7819

19

3

10

18

26

40

Male

25416

33

10

22

32

42

60

400m Run

94% of people were like, “We say at our gym that it’s 400m if you run out the door, past the dumpster and turn around at 3rd street light. That’s probably not legit. I better leave that blank.”

Just a thought. One reason why the men’s weight may have more frequency at 185 is that it is close to the 85kg mark that corresponds to the 85kg weight class for men’s weightlifting. The 85kg and 94kg classes are two of the more populous classes so I would suspect that athletes who are heavily into CrossFit may also compete in weightlifting. I don’t know if it would be a statistically significant number but it may.

swiftsam

Thanks DRG, That’s a great point. I’m sure that there are few patterns both from weightlifting and from kg –> lb conversions that I’m missing.

Mike Coleman

How are you pulling the data? I looked for an export function, and couldn’t find it.